------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "EYES TO THE SKY FOF UFOS AND THE LIGHT FANTASTIC" 14/07/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basingstoke & North Hampshire Gazette Friday 14th July 1995. STRANGE lights in the night and UFOs have brought a bizarre talking point for villagers and townsfolk alike. The people of Litchfield, near Whitchurch, where a corn circle appeared last Friday, are no strangers to unexplained phenomena. Residents of the tiny hamlet of Dunley-within a stone's throw of the Litchfield corn imprint, have been seeing strange lights in the night sky for more than two years. They claim the lights, some of which are red and green, form the outline of a clock. Norman Buckingham first made the sighting. "We've had all sorts of strange things happen over here" he said, adding: "If these things are stars, I'm a bloody idiot." Neighbour Rita Constable said the lights gave off immense power and were visible most nights. She has even shown them to relatives. "I've got terrible eyes, but I can see it so clearly," she said. Meanwhile residents of the Buckskin, Basingstoke, believe they spotted a UFO at the weekend. A women living in Cambrian Way, Buckskin, who wished to remain anonymous, said she saw a "black, round ball" in the sky at about 9.15pm on Sunday. "It suddenly shot off at the speed of light," she said. Her three-year old son also spied the object. A man living opposite sighted something identical the night before. A spokesman for Airborne Aviation, based at Popham Airfield, said the "black ball" object could possibly be a hot-air balloon. He heard no reports of UFOs or strange occurrences over the weekend. Commenting on the Litchfield lights, he said aircraft displayed green and red lights. Nearby RAF bases a Odiham and Boscombe Down have been night-flying lately, he said. Basingstoke Police said they had received no reports of UFO sightings. Note: In another article in same newspaper, the corn circle mentioned was dissmissed as the work of 'rural vandals'.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GOVERNMENT TRIES TO STOP GROOM ATTORNEY 13/07/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 13, 1995 By Warren Bates The U.S. government is trying to halt attempts by an attorney representing former workers at the Air Force's Groom Lake installation from questioning potential witnesses in two lawsuits. Citing national security issues and an argument that the litigation is moot, government attorneys are asking U.S. District Judge Philip Pro for a protective order that would prevent witness depositions. The motion is aimed at Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor who recently sent notices that he would depose two Environmental Protection Agency officials and the "commander of the Groom Lake facility." The workers' lawsuits allege they were exposed to toxic fumes from open-pit burning of hazardous waste at the facility, 35 miles west of Alamo in Lincoln County. Since the case's inception, Turley has been in protracted battles with the government, which recently tried to seize documents from his possession on a claim that national security was threatened. In court papers filed Wednesday, U.S. Justice Department attorney Russell Young Said Turley's attempts to interview witnesses should be stayed. He argued that the government has pending before Pro motions to dismiss the cases and additional discovery will lead to additional disagreements, which would "distract the court." Young contended that if Turley is allowed to proceed, there could be a "serious risk that national security information might be inadvertently disclosed." The procedure would be "burdensome and cumbersome" because the government would have to decide whether the information given during questioning posed security risks, Young said. He argued that if Pro denied the motions to dismiss, the workers would not be prejudiced because they would be given time extensions to conduct interviews. The government is arguing that one of the worker suits is moot because an EPA inspection has been done at the facility. Young contended this satisfied the goal of that particular lawsuit. Results of the inspection are not being made public. Young said the other case also will fail because Pro has previously ruled that much of the information is classified. thus the workers will not be getting any new information that will assist their case. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NATIONALLY KNOWN SPEAKERS COMING TO DENVER AND BOULDER 11/07/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DENVER, July 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is being released by the Sophia Institute: Marc Davenport, Christopher O'Brien, and Leah Haley will be featured speakers at an all-day conference, "The UFO Phenomenon," to be held Saturday, Aug. 26, at GCB Auditorium, University of Denver Campus in Denver, and Sunday, Aug. 27 at the Boulder Broker Inn, Boulder, Colo. Tickets are available at the Third Millennium Bookstore, 303-693-3407. At 9 a.m., Marc Davenport will present a broad overview of UFO phenomena including spectacular photos and videos of "flying saucers" and drawings of seven types of alien beings. Pioneering the theory that UFOs are time travelers, Mr. Davenport explains how they appear to be getting here by literally warping the fabric of space and time. Author of "Visitors from Time: The Secret of the UFOs," Mr. Davenport is an avid researcher, writer and lecturer on UFOs, and is editor and co-founder of Contact Forum, the Round Table of Universal Communication. At 12:45 p.m., following a catered lunch, Christopher O'Brien will present video evidence and discuss results of his research on Indian legends, UFO sightings, cattle mutilations, devil sightings and other occurrences in San Luis Valley, Colo. Mr. O'Brien, a writer/musician who recently moved from New York to Crestone, Colo., was intrigued by numerous paranormal reports. He began investigating, publishing his findings in a newsletter, and is currently compiling them into a book, "Colorado's Mysterious Valley." At 2 p.m., Leah Haley will discuss the abduction experience recently popularized in movies, such as "Intruders" and "Fire In the Sky." She will relate her own experiences as an abductee: what happens during an abduction, why abductions may be occurring, and what happens to abductees after the experience. A writer and former CPA with two Master's degrees, Ms. Haley authored "Lost Was the Key," the gripping account of her abduction. Haley has also been kidnapped by military agents, interrogated and threatened. She continues to have abduction experiences, some leaving physical scars, receives strange, telepathic messages and experiences prophetic dreams of cataclysmic events such as earthquakes and famine. Cost, including lunch: $45 early registration, $60 after Aug. 4, $75 at the door. Doors open at 8:30 a.m. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DELTA CLIPPER DEMONSTRATES RE-ENTRY MANEUVER 07/07/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M., July 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The Delta Clipper- Experimental launch vehicle (DC-X) has successfully completed its eighth flight while performing the critical rotation maneuver that a vertical-landing rocket would execute after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. After climbing to 8,200 feet at a maximum ascent rate of 240 feet per second today, the McDonnell Douglas-built experimental rocket set up for the maneuver by pointing its nose 10 degrees below the horizon, and then it rotated 138 degrees to a base-first flight attitude. The DC-X then landed base first using its four Pratt & Whitney RL-10 engines as brakes. "Today, the DC-X demonstrated the maneuver required by a full-scale vertical- landing reusable launch vehicle using propulsion control," said Dave Schweikle, director of McDonnell Douglas' DC-X program. "The incremental expansion of the DC-X flight envelope over the previous flights has been in preparation for this critical maneuver," he explained. The test flight for the DC-X, a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing rocket, began at 7:02 a.m. MDT at the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range. Total flight time was two minutes and four seconds. The maximum altitude of today's flight was 8,200 feet, which exceeded the 5,700 feet flown during the last flight on June 12. During the ascent, the DC-X traveled 2,100 feet down range from the flight pad and performed the 138 degree rotation maneuver as it returned toward the landing site. The DC-X descended base first at 165 feet per second from an altitude of about 7,000 feet, using its engines to brake for a landing. Each flight continues to demonstrate the feasibility of a reusable rocket which has aircraft-like operability and maintainability. Similar to the June 12 test, post-flight activities will provide information for rapid turnaround between flights for a reusable launch vehicle. The DC-X, built by McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach, Calif., is managed by the U.S. Air Force Phillips Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Flight test support is provided by the Air Force Space and Missile Center, Test and Evaluation Directorate. When this year's flight test program ends, McDonnell Douglas will integrate key advanced technology components into the experimental vehicle under a series of cooperative agreements awarded by NASA. Flight tests are scheduled to resume in 1996; the vehicle will be called the DC-XA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UFO AT WESTERHAM 06/07/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the Sevenoaks Chronicle Thursday 6th July reports of a UFO over Westerham Hill near Sevenoaks, England. A 41 year old woman who wished to remain anonymous said "on Wenesday of last week I saw an object only 100 feet up in the air. I saw terifically bright lights moving in a zig zag pattern they were yellow or white and going along in a snake like fashion. I know what I've seen it couldn't have been another aircraft becouse it was so low it would have crashed. This happened at 12.38 Wednesday 28th June ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOT PROPERTY FROM OUTER SPACE 06/07/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Independent - London It happened somewhere around the start of July 1947. Nobody can remember the precise date, but they do know that the winds howled and the thunder crashed. [...] The matter was closed - until, startlingly, 31 years later. In 1978, Jesse Marcel said publicly on his retirement that the debris which had appeared in the newspaper photographs was not the same as the load that he and Mack Brazel had collected. Discovering the truth of what happened has absorbed, frustrated and tantalised UFO watchers around the world, but, until March of this year, it had not divided them. Now a war is raging, mainly on computer screens via the Internet, the ferocity of which space-groupies have never seen. The cause of the fracas is a film allegedly made by a former US military cameraman, who says he was summoned by the US government to Roswell in 1947 and who has kept hold of part of the film ever since. It shows, supposedly, an autopsy being conducted by humans in white radiation-type suits on aliens from the Roswell wreckage. The aliens are essentially human in shape, but they have no hair, a small nose and mouth; they have six fingers and six toes, and swollen stomachs. They appear to be female but have no breasts. Alone among the world's UFO research groups, the British UFO Research Association, Bufora, headed by Philip Mantle, is making claims for the film. Mantle has shown stills on the Internet and will be screening the whole film at a large ufologists' conference in Sheffield, scheduled for 19-20 August. Channel 4 is also making a documentary based on the film. "CERTAINLY, I DON'T HAVE CONCRETE EVIDENCE CLAIMING THAT THE FILM IS AUTHENTIC," Mantle says. "What is wrong with showing it and letting others decide for themselves?" Mantle first got wind of the film just over two years ago from a British video producer, Ray Santilli, who encountered its octogenarian American owner while working in the US. "I PAID HIM CASH for a music film I needed," says Santilli, "and he asked if I would be interested in this other video, because HE SAID THAT HE WANTED MONEY to help to pay for his grand-daughter's wedding. I didn't have the money at the time and also I WANTED TO CHECK THE FILM OUT THOROUGHLY, so it wasn't until January of this year that I actually purchased it." The price is rumoured at POUNDS 100,000 - IT MUST HAVE BEEN AN EXPENSIVE WEDDING. [...] According to Santilli, "UNTIL SOMEONE CAN PROVE THE FILM ISN'T GENUINE, THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE." But the reaction among the international community of ufologists is that THIS FILM IS NOT ONLY A FAKE, BUT IS SABOTAGING THEIR WORK. They are complaining, in hundreds of passionate e-mail messages to each other, that they themselves haven't been allowed see any proof. For the first time, possible UFO material has been taken out of their circle and into the realms of international bankability. "They have signed a pact with the devil," says Jenny Randles, who describes herself as Britain's only professional ufologist and is the BBC's adviser on UFOs. "THEY ARE ENDORSING THIS FILM FOR PURELY COMMERCIAL REASONS. IT IS UNDOING ALL THE WORK SERIOUS UFOLOGISTS HAVE DONE FOR 20 YEARS. I RESIGNED FROM BUFORA'S COUNCIL 18 MONTHS AGO BECAUSE OF THIS." Randles' gripe stems from the fact that she and many of her American colleagues believe that in the past 20 years, they have changed ufology from a "crank's pastime" to a credible research programme of great value to the scientific world. "Our research has mostly led not to the discovery of UFOs, but to hitherto undiscovered scientific phenomena, which scientists take extremely seriously," she says. "In Roswell, above all, decent research has been done, which shows several reasons why the US government may have wanted to cover up the original wreck. We now know they were testing nuclear missiles with monkeys at Roswell which, had it been discovered, would have caused outrage even then. If this film is authentic, why can't we be shown proof of its authenticity?" SANTILLI HAPPILY ADMITS THAT HE WITHHELD THE FILM FROM UFOLOGISTS AT LARGE PRIMARILY FOR COMMERCIAL REASONS. "The UFO community would have instantly copied the film, thereby making it worthless," he says. "They are a strange bunch and I did not want to get mixed up with them. But I needed Mantle's help, because when I was first shown the film, I had never even heard of Roswell. I needed someone to explain it all to me. I agreed that in exchange for his help, he could show it at his August conference." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ET LIVES, SAYS MAN FROM THE MINISTRY 02/07/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHITEHALL SHOCK AS ITS CHIEF ALIEN-WATCHER ADMITS : I BELIEVE IN UFOS The Mail on Sunday Journalist - Nick Fielding It was the week when John Redwood's earthly origins were called into doubt and Mr.Spock pointy ears were given away by the thousand. So it will come as no surprise that one of Whitehall's finest has succumbed to the power of aliens. Nick Pope headed the Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a office, with a brief to deal with inquiries about flying saucers and other unexplained phenomena. It was his calm voice which reassured the many members of the public who called to report strange lights in the sky or little green men on the lawn. But, in possibly the most embarrassing turnaround in Ministry of Defence history, Mr.Pope has gone over to the other side. To the horror of his employers, the 29-year old civil servant, who now works in another part of the Ministry, has become a convert. "I think it is fair to say that in my three years as the Government expert on UFOs, I was regarded as a bit of a maverick," said Mr.Pope. MENACE "I came into that job as an open-minded sceptic and I came out a believer." As if that were not enough, the errant ufologist is to publish a book based on his experiences as Britain's first line of defence in the undeclared war against the alien menace. Provisionally titled OPEN SKIES, CLOSED MINDS : OFFICIAL REACTION TO THE UFO PHENOMENON the book is unlikely to win him many friends at the Ministry. In fact, his bosses have already expressed their displeasure at his manuscript, for which he must get permission before publication. The book examines all the available records in the Whitehall archives and talks about a number of new cases. But Mr.Pope offers little comfort for UFO buffs seeking proof of a Government cover-up. "We don't throw open our files en bloc, but eventually most of them filter down to the Public Record Office." Mr.Pope cannot pinpoint the moment of his conversion, but he rules out an alien plot. He says he was convinced by the details of a small number of British sightings which have so far defied conventional explanation. "Probably the best example is the Rendlesham Forest case in December 1980 where some kind of object came down in Suffolk near the RAF bases at Woodbridge and Bentwaters. This is now regarded as the best attested case of a UFO crash outside the US." Mr.Pope's conversion is likely to cause a sensation among committed ufologists. Graham Birdsall, editor of UFO Magazine, said : "I welcome the bravery of a man who must have experienced tremendous pressure from his superiors, but who stuck to his views." The MOD refused to comment on Mr.Pope. But surely the men from the Ministry are wishing that someone, somewhere, would beam him up. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROFESSOR MACK AND THE LITTLE GREEN MEN 02/07/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Sunday Telegraph William Langley reports on the 'body-snatching' theories that could get Mack sacked THE SIMPLE furnish ings in Dr John Mack's office on the third floor of the Harvard Univer sity Medical School include a gallon-sized tub of peanut butter, a portable tape-recorder and a low couch on which, not long ago, a woman lay panting, whimpering and barely able to form the words that Mack would later publish for the benefit of a resoundingly sceptical world. "They are not like us," said the woman. "They are in control. I have to surrender to them." As a psychiatrist of international repute, Mack had already established to his own satisfaction that "Sheila" was not insane. He was equally certain that she had suffered some form of extreme trauma. On the couch, in the little room, overlooking the flowering elms and flagged footpaths of Harvard's 18th-century campus, the woman eventually related a long, detailed story of being abducted by space aliens. In retrospect, the most remarkable aspect of it was Mack's inclination to believe her. In the next few weeks Harvard must decide what to do about John Mack. To the acute embarrassment of America's foremost university, the 64-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning academic has emerged as the godhead of an entire global underground of UFO believers. Diplomatically summarising the mood on campus, Mack's head of department, Dr Malkah Notman, says: "People have great respect for John's other achievements. But the perception is that this is not a productive area of research." A committee of inquiry, formed to investigate his activities, is about to deliver its verdict. Already a strong whiff of burning martyr is drifting around the campus. As it has grown in scope and profile, Mack's "alternative" work has become the virtual gospel of those who claim to know that we are not alone. They flock to him from all over the world, these "experiencers" - as they are known in UFO jargon - whose accounts of being kidnapped by extraterrestrials have, for decades, been met with either hoots of derision or the offer of a stronger prescription. On the strength of Mack's reputation, their stories have lately been catapulted from the lurid pages of America's supermarket tabloids into the meaty main fare of Psychology Today and the American Journal of Medicine. On the couch, under Mack's piercing, scholarly gaze, they tell tales so bizarre and impossible that, in taking them seriously, Mack seems to be chancing not so much their credibility as his own. "I worry about John," says Paul McHugh, head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. "He is a brilliant man who is easily persuaded of things, but this time he has lost it." Some of Mack's subjects claim to have been abducted regularly since childhood, forced to undergo medical experiments aboard spaceships, to have visited other galaxies and spawned alien children. They tell of being floated from their beds on beams of light, of having tracking devices inserted into their bodies, and of being given apocalyptic insights into the final fate of the world. Some believe that the aliens are preparing to take over the world, others that they are working for its salvation. All are convinced that their experiences are entirely real. In Mack's professional opinion, very few of these people are mad. Nor are they an easily dismissible bunch of Walter Mittys and compulsive attention-seekers. The majority, he suggests, are ordinary people, with ordinary jobs and ordinary lives in whose scalded consciousnesses dwells a strange and terrible mystery. Disciplinary hearings are extremely rare at America's elite universities. When they do occur, the charges almost invariably relate to such conventional acts of misconduct as plagiarism, drunkenness or sexual harassment. "The Mack case is quite different. Essentially, it is a dispute over ideas - it is about what he has written," said Jonathan Knight, the AAUP's associate secretary. "One doesn't encounter this sort of thing very often in American higher education.' So why has Harvard - the mother lode of the East Coast liberal establishment - taken such an aggressive line against Mack? The man heading the inquiry, Arnold Relman, a fellow professor and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, last week refused to comment, but in an earlier statement the university cited an obligation to "review" Mack's methods of research for possible abuses of procedure. In particular, it wants to examine claims that he has "planted" abduction memories on patients suffering from otherwise routine psychological disorders. One former subject gave a particularly damaging assessment of Mack's investigative techniques to Newsweek magazine earlier this year - alleging that he had bullied and manipulated her into accepting the probability of abduction. Since starting his research five years ago, Mack has studied the cases of more than 100 abduction victims. As he painstakingly points out, most come across as regular, neighbourhood types - such as "Jerry", a 32-year-old Massachusetts clerical worker, who believes she has been kidnapped more than 50 times since she was a toddler. Now married, with three children of her own, Jerry says she knows when the terror is about to begin from a ringing in her ears and a strange crackling energy that straightens her hair. "I am awakened by a tap," she says. "I feel paralysed but awake. They invade you entirely. Then they float you out." Like many "experiencers", Jerry claims the aliens have conducted experiments on her reproductive organs; eggs were removed from her womb, she believes, and embryos implanted. Jerry recalls that when she was 27 the aliens took her aboard a spaceship and showed her two little girls, "very angelic, with pale skin, wispy hair and huge blue eyes. They said to me: 'You are our mother.' After embracing them, I felt all the usual motherly instincts." Born into a high-achieving, New York Jewish family, Mack has blazed a dazzling trail through Harvard, first as a student, graduating cum laude, then as a member of faculty, and co-founder of the university's school of psychiatry. He has lectured worldwide, and published several books, most notably a 1977 biography of Lawrence of Arabia, A Prince of Disorder, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Several critics hailed it as one of the finest psychological personality studies of the 20th century. But it did not sell nearly as well as his book about UFOs. NOW Mack has become rich and famous beyond the dreams of the average, chalky- fingered university professor. And that, he believes, is the real reason why he is the first Harvard professor of modern times to be effectively put on trial. Tall, bony, with an unnervingly intense gaze, Mack is the subject of considerable gossip and innuendo on the Harvard cocktail-party circuit. There have been whispered stories about the real reasons for his estrangement from his wife, Sally, and widely circulated accounts of his supposedly eccentric behaviour at social gatherings. "Some people support me, and some think I'm outrageous," admitted Mack. "I won't deny the whole thing has been painful." It was a chance meeting with the New York artist Budd Hopkins, a leading figure in American UFO circles, that first triggered Mack's interest in abduction theory. Hopkins has spent years collecting and analysing accounts of extra- terrestrial activity. "Nothing in my 40 years as a psychiatrist prepared me for what Budd had to say," recalled Mack, who would later dedicate his book to him. Whatever the ultimate worth of his conclusions, Mack has provided the world with a useful guide to alien abduction techniques. From his case studies, it appears that virtually all victims are taken from their beds or motor vehicles - although one woman tells of being snatched from a snowmobile. The aliens' approach is usually indicated by electrical activity - a TV set suddenly coming on, interference on a car radio. Victims often report seeing an intense blue or white light and hearing a rhythmic humming noise. By way of corroborative evidence, Hack says claims of abduction are frequently accompanied by independent reports of UFO activity in the same area. Most of the victims recall being "floated" on some kind of light beam to the alien craft. Under hypnosis they relive the panic of seeing their homes or vehicles slowly vanishing beneath them. Some can recite, verbatim, entire conversations that took place with their captors. For reasons that remain unclear even to Mack, very few can remember the circumstances of their return to earth. Who are these people? Should we be listening to them? Joe, a 34-year-old psychotherapist, contacted Mack in 1992 hoping to discuss what he called, in his letter, "a variety of ET experiences going back to early childhood". One of eight children, Joe had been raised in the backwoods of Maine, with a healthy respect for nature and the big outdoors. An alternative form of help is offered by a thoroughly sceptical, and distinctly earth-rooted, scientific establishment. Among mainstream psychiatrists, the overwhelming consensus is that the UFO phenomenon is the result of what Ronald Siegal, University of California researcher, calls "the normal hallucinatory powers of the human brain". Mack's numerous detractors accuse him of peddling bad dreams as good science, of passing off old lore as new research and of failing to make a distinction between sanity and the absence of mental disorder. They accuse him of manipulating his subjects' "memories" to fit his predispositions, and of ducking some of the most elementary questions of the whole UFO debate. ONE of Mack's most outspoken critics is the prominent University of California psychologist Richard Ofshe. "If there's a certain brilliance in backing the trendiest horses available, then Mack has it," said Ofshe. "He has made a stellar, absolutely spectacular, world-class series of mistakes." If the aliens are really out there, why are their spaceships landing in suburban back gardens in Cleveland and not on the lawn of the White House? How come Herbert from Houston is selected for study and not the Duke of Edinburgh? What makes the aliens so shy of revealing their obviously superior capability? And if they are so capable, why have they been performing exactly the same experiments for decades? According to most specialists, the consistency of the accounts that Mack found so striking can be simply explained by the popular cultural portrayal of aliens as leathery beings with big heads - a la ET - and exposure to the traditional comic-book images of flying saucers. Those who claim never to have encountered such images are merely resistant to the idea of having done so - rather in the way that people deny being influenced by advertising. A 1993 Canadian study of 49 experiencers broadly confirmed Mack's view that such people are unlikely to be suffering from mental disorders to any clinically significant degree. What did set them apart was a strong predisposition "to believe in UFOs and the existence of alien life forms". In other words, the material was already in their heads. The condition that makes alien abduction appear real is called "sleep paralysis", a comparatively rare phenomenon which may affect up to four per cent of people at some time in their lives. The senses are aware and functioning, but the controlling mechanism of the brain is still asleep. The effects can be terrifying and memorable. Sufferers have the sensation that their dreams are really happening. If ideas of UFOs and aliens are already deep in the psyche, sleep paralysis is almost guaranteed to bring them out. "It's essentially a dream experience, made sufficiently realistic as to be logged in the brain as authentic memory," said Seigal. "It has been known about since antiquity. In German folklore the condition was represented by an old woman, known as the Mare, who sat on the sleeper's chest. It gives us the origin of the word "nightmare". Will Harvard's bad dream end with the grounding of Mack's UFOs? Even without the contribution of the space aliens, this has been an annus horribilis for America's most illustrious university. A fatal helicopter crash destroyed its historic boat sheds; the head of the Singapore police force was mugged on campus; and a female student hacked her room-mate to death with a 10-inch carving knife. "It's been very tough," said the university's chief spokesman, Joe Wrinn, "and I am very, very tired." But this is not the time to sleep. Sleep is when they come for you.